The Inexactness of Exactness

I am a perfectionist. I know I don’t always seem like one, but, if I’m going to do something, I like to be as perfect as possible at it. You know where I’m going with this. It’s impossible to be perfect when it comes to developing new habits. After all, what are the new habits supposed to be? How can I be good at it if I’m making it up myself?

So here’s the thing, I like weighing and counting and measuring my food, but it gets to be a chore after a while. Not that I’m really complaining, but then comes “going out to eat” and maybe going to a friend’s house, or something, and I’m supposed to estimate. Oh no! I just don’t know how to estimate. Then, it puts me into procrastination mode. It’s like a freezing up, so that I can’t deal with deciding how much of something I ate.

And then there are things like mashed potatoes. Now, I can look in the Weight Watcher’s book and see that a half cup is 3 points, which is easy. The other option is to weigh all the potatoes each time we make them at home, then be sure that whoever is making them (not usually me) measures exactly how much milk goes in, etc. THEN figure out how many half cup servings that is so I can figure out the points. Whew! I’ll bet you even got tired out just reading about it! We don’t use a recipe for such things. It will be different each time, so I would have to go through that exercise each time.

Then there are the “half points” or lack thereof. My favorite breakfast, which I’ll share soon, is actually 3.5 points, if I take the points value of each item and then add them together manually. Now, with e-tools, it’s 4 points. Not that it’s so bad, but there’s a certain satisfaction in having a half point left a the end of the day.

So, I have to get used  the fact that there’s a certain amount of “figuring” that goes into it, and there’s no way for it to be perfect, by any means. I’m going to accept that, even if I don’t like it. I’ll get used to it some day!